44 NEBRASKA CATTLEMAN March 2025 POLICY Nebraska Legislative Session Begins MATTHEW MELCHOR | NC DIRECTOR OF STATE GOVERNMENT AFFAIRS Jan. 8, 2025, marked the start of the 109th Legislature in Nebraska. The Legislature is overwhelmingly new with 35 senators elected or appointed since 2022 and 17 of those senators elected this past November. While some, like Grand Island Sen. Dan Quick who has been elected as a senator before, and Syracuse Sen. Bob Hallstrom who lobbied on behalf of organizations before running for legislature, know the Legislature and its processes well, the others will have a learning curve as they settle into their new role. This also means finding staff, determining committee assignments and getting to know their new “co-workers.” Once the Legislature gaveled in, work quickly began. In Nebraska, bills can only be introduced within the first 10 days of a session. For freshman senators just entering the chamber, this can be a quick turnaround from hearing issues during campaign season to getting ideas formed and bills drafted to fix these problems. During all of this, the legislative body is also determining committee chairpersons, establishing and debating the rules for the session, and sending some bills to committees. Once the 10 days passed, the legislature had 714 bills, 18 resolutions and 18 proposed constitutional amendments. On Jan. 15, Gov. Jim Pillen addressed the Legislature in his State of the State address, giving thanks for his medical staff and recovery after being injured while horseback riding just before Christmas. During his address, Pillen outlined and detailed his administration’s priorities for the session. This year, he lauded the state’s economic development, touting some of the lowest unemployment rates in the country and population growth across Nebraska. He stated that the Legislature must work to lower the tax burden on Nebraskans while also recognizing the work that has been done through last year’s special session. He also discussed protecting the agricultural industry through data privacy bills and a ban on lab-grown meat in Nebraska – both being imperative to the protection and future success of agriculture in our state. NC Policy Is Set A week after bill introduction concluded, the Nebraska Cattlemen (NC) Legislative Committee convened to determine the association’s policy stances on issues that may impact livestock producers and their operations across the state. These positions are determined through grassroots policy established by each of NC’s six policy committees: Animal Health and Nutrition, Brand and Property Rights, Education and Research, Marketing and Commerce, Natural Resources and Environment, and Taxation. The committee chairs, vice chairs and chair-elects discuss bills pertinent to their committees and use NC’s policy book to assess their stances. The committee chairs propose these to the Legislative Committee, which discusses the bills and their possible effects. Finally, these positions are then proposed to the NC Board of Directors to affirm and give the association’s policy staff a direction to move over the course of the legislative session. The last piece of the grassroots legislative process is to determine priority bills for the session – a selection of three to five bills that the association will watch closely and give testimony on. This session, the topics NC will monitor with a close eye are animal health identification, food and nutrition labeling and property tax relief. Animal health identification encompasses two main bills: LB 646 and LB 665. LB 646 currently proposes to exempt registered feedlots from brand inspection and would allow nonregistered feedlots to pay a fee to become exempt. LB 665 would prohibit the use of electronic identification tags in livestock that are manufactured by any entity that has direct or indirect ties to foreign adversaries, per the Code of Federal Regulations. Both bills as they stand are opposed by Nebraska Cattlemen. Food nutrition and labeling contains LB 246, which is the governor’s proposed ban on lab-grown meat in the state, and LB 658, which seeks labeling requirements and guidelines for
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